Ronald Reagan - "State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan"

Upton Sinclair - "100%: The Story of a Patriot"

Richard Marsh - "The Beetle"

P. G. Wodehouse - "Three Men and a Maid"

Seven Little Australians

E >> Ethel Turner >> Seven Little Australians




She covered her face with her hands, for one of her quickly gathered
tears was trembling on her lashes.

Mr. Gillet dropped the strap and the pipe, and looked across to her
with tender eyes.

"I am more than twice your age, Miss Meg, old enough nearly to be
your father--you will forgive me for saying all this, won't you?
I was thinking, of my sister who died. I had another little sister,
too, a year older, but she was hard--only event to her once.
She is one of the best women in England now, but her lips are severe.
Little Miss Meg, could not bear the thought of you growing hard."

Half a dozen big tears had fallen down among the forks. Meg was
crying because it was borne upon her what a very hateful creature
she was. First Alan lectured her and spoke of his sister, and now
this man.

He misinterpreted her silence.

"I have no right to speak to you like this, because my life has been
any colour but white--that is it, isn't it, Miss Meg?" he said with
great sadness.

Meg dropped her sheltering hands.

"Oh, no," she said, "oh! how CAN you think so? It is only I am so
horrid. "She rummaged in her pocket and brought out the ribbon.

"Will you take it again?" she said--" oh, PLEASE, just to make me
feel less horrid. Oh, please take it!"

She looked at him with wet, imploring eyes, and held it out.

He took it, smoothed its crumpledness, and placed it in his
pocket-book.

"God bless you," he said, and the tone made Meg sob.



CHAPTER XX Little Judy


Across the grass came a little flying figure, Judy in a short
pink frock with her wild curls blowing about her face. .

"Are you a candidate for sunstroke--where IS your hat, Miss Judy?"
Mr. Gillet asked.

Judy shook back her dark tangle:

"Sorrow a know I knows," she said--"it's a banana the General
is afther dyin' for, and sure it's a dead body I shall live to see
misself if you've eaten all the oranges.":

Meg pushed the bag of fruit across the cloth to her, and tried to
tilt her hat over her tell-tale eyes.

But the bright dark ones had seen the wet lashes the first moment.

"I s'pose you've been reading stupid poetry and making Meg cry?"
she said, with an aggressive glance from Mr. Gillet to the book on
the grass. "You really ought to be, ashamed of yourselves, SICH
behaviour at a picnic. It's been a saving in oranges,m though,
that's a mercy"

She took half a dozen great fat ones from the bag, as well as four
or five bananas, and went back with flying 1teps to the belt of trees,
where the General in his holland coat could just be seen.

He was calmly grubbing up the earth and putting it in his little red
mouth when she arrived with the bananas.

He looked up at her with an adorable smile. "BABY!" she said, swooping
down upon him with one of her wild rushes "BABY!

She kissed him fifty times; it almost hurt her sometimes, the feeling
of love for this little fat, dirty boy.

Then she gathered him up on her knee and wiped as much of the dirt as
possible from his mouth with the corner of his coat.

"Narna," he said, struggling onto the ground again; so she took the
skin from a great yellow one and put it in his small, chubby hand.

He ate some of it, and squeezed the rest up tightly in his hands,
gleefully watching it come up between his wee fingers in little
worm-like morsels.

Then he smeared it over his dimpled face, and even rubbed it on his
hair, while Judy was engrossed with her fifth orange.

So, of course, she had to whip him for doing it, or pretend to, which
came to the same thing. And then he had to whip her, which did not
only mean pretence.

He beat her with a stick he found near, he smacked her face and pulled
her hair and bumped himself up and down on her chest, and all in such
solemn, painstaking earnestness that she could only laugh even when
he really hurt her.

"Dood now?" he said at last anxiously. And she began to weep noisily,
with covered face and shaking shoulders, in the proper, penitent way.
And then he put his darling arms round her neck and hugged her, and
said "Ju-Ju" in a choking little voice, and patted her cheeks, and
gave her a hundred eager, wide, wet kisses till she was better.

Then they played chasings, and the General fell down twenty times,
and scratched his little knees and hands, and struggled up again.
and staggered on.

Presently Judy stood still in a hurry; there was a tick working
its slow way into her wrist. Only its two back legs were left out
from under the skin, and for a long time she pulled and pulled without
any success. Then it broke in two, and she had to leave one half in
for little Grandma and kerosene to extract on their return.

Two or three minutes it had taken her to try to move it, and when
she looked up the General had toddled same distance away, and was
travelling along as fast as ever his little fat legs would carry
him, thinking he was racing her. Just as she, started after him he
looked back, his eyes dancing, his face dimpled and mischievous, and,
oh! so dirty..

And then--ah, God!

It is so hard to write it. My pen has had only happy writing
to-do so far, and now!

"You rogue!" Judy called, pretending to run very quickly.
Then the whole world seemed to rise up before her.

There was a tree falling, one of the great, gaunt, naked things that
had been ringbarked long ago. All day it had swayed to and fro,
rotten through and through; now there came up across the plain a puff
of wind, and down it went before it. One wild ringing cry Judy gave,
then she leaped across the ground, her arms outstretched to the little
lad running with laughing eyes and lips straight to death.

The crash shook the trees around, the very air seemed splintered.

They had heard it--all the others--heard the wild cry and then the
horrible thud.

How their knees shool what blanched faces they had as they rushed
towards the sound!

They lifted it off the little bodies--the long, silvered trunk with
the gum dead and dried in streaks upon it. Judy was face downwards,
her arms spread out.

And underneath her was the General, a little shaken, mightily
astonished, but quite unhurt. Meg clasped him for a minute, but then
laid him down, and gathered with the others close around Judy.

Oh, the little dark, quiet head, the motionless body, in its pink,
crushed frock, the small, thin, outspread hands!

"Judy!" Pip said, in a voice of beseeching agony. But the only
answer was the wind at the tree-tops and the frightened breathings
of the others.

Mr. Gillet remembered there was no one to act but himself. He went
with Pip to the stockman's hut; and they took the door off its
leather hinges and carried it down the hill.

"I will lift her," he said, and passed his arms around the little
figure, raising her slowly, slowly, gently upwards, laying her on
the door with her face to the sky:

But she moaned--oh, how she moaned!

Pip, whose heart had leapt to his throat at the first sign of life,
almost went mad as the little sounds of agony burst from her lips.

They raised the stretcher, and bore her up the hill to the little
brown hut at the top.

Then Mr. Gillet spoke, outside the doorway, to Meg and Pip, who
seemed dazed, stunned.

"It will be hours before we can get help, and it is five now," he
said. "Pip, there is a doctor staying at Boolagri ten miles along
the road. Fetch him--run all the way. I, will go back home--fourteen
miles. Miss Meg, I can't be back all at once. I will bring a buggy;
the bullock-dray is too slow and jolting, even when it comes back.
You must watch by her, give her water if she asks--there is nothing
else you can do."

"She is dying? "Meg said--" dying?

" He thought of all that might happen before he brought help, and dare
not leave her unprepared.

"I think her back is broken," he said, very quietly. "If it is, it
means death."

Pip fled away down the road that led to the doctor's.

Mr. Gillet gave a direction or two, then he looked at Meg.

"Everything depends on you; you must not even think of breaking down,"
he said. "Don't move her, watch all the time."

He moved away towards the lower road.

She sprang after him..

Will she die while you are away?--no one but me."

Her eyes were wild, terrified.

"God knows!" he said, and turned away.

It was almost more than he could bear to go and leave this little
girl alone to face so terrible a thing. "God help me!" she moaned,
hurrying back, but not looking at the hot, low-hanging sky. "Help
me, God! God, help me, help me!"



CHAPTER XXI When the Sun Went Down


Such a sunset!

Down at the foot of the grass hill there was a flame-coloured sky,
with purple, soft clouds massed in banks high up where the dying
glory met the paling blue. The belt of trees had grown black, and
stretched sombre, motionless arms against the orange background.
All the wind had died, and the air hung hot and still, freighted
with the strange silence of the bush.

And at the top of the hill, just within the doorway of the little
brown hut, her wide eyes on the wonderful heavens, Judy lay dying.
She was very quiet now, though she had been talking--talking of
all sorts of things. She told them she had no pain at all.

"Only I shall die when they move me," she said.

Meg was sitting in a little heap on the floor beside her. She had
never moved her eyes from the face on the pillow of mackintoshes, she
had never opened her white lips to say one word.

Outside the bullocks stood motionless against the sky--Judy said
they looked like stuffed ones having their portrait taken. She
smiled the least little bit, but Meg said, "Don't," and writhed.

Two of the men had gone on superfluous errands for help; the others
stood some distance away, talking in subdued voices:

There was nothing for them to do. The brown man had been talking--
a rare thing for him.

He had soothed the General off to sleep, and laid him in the bunk
with the blue blanket tucked around him. And he had made a billy
of hot strong tea, and asked the children, with tears in his eyes,
to drink some, but none of them would.

Baby had fallen to sleep on the floor, her arms clasped tightly
around Judy's lace-up boot.

Runty was standing, with a stunned look on his white face, behind
the stretcher. His eyes were on his sister's hair, but he did
not dare to let there wander to her face, for fear of what he should
see there. Nellie was moving all the time--now to the fence to strain
her eyes down the road, where the evening shadows lay heavily, now
to fling herself face downward behind the hut and say, "Make her
better, God! God, make her better, make her better! Oh! CAN't You
make her better?"

Greyer grew the shadows round the little but, the bullocks' outlines
had faded, and only an indistinct mass of soft black loomed across
the light. Behind the trees the fire was going out, here and there
were yellow, vivid streaks yet, but the flaming sun-edge, had dipped
beyond the world, and the purple, delicate veil was dropping down.

A curlew's note broke the silence, wild, mournful, unearthly. Meg
shivered, and sat up straight. Judy's brow, grew damp, her eyes
dilated, her lips trembled.

"Meg!" she said, in a whisper that cut the air. "Oh, Meg, I'm
frightened! MEG, I'm so frightened!"

"God!" said Meg's heart.

"Meg, say something. Meg, help me! Look at the dark, Meg. MEG,
I can't die! Oh, why don't they be quick?"

NelIie flew to the fence again; then to say, "Make her better,
God--oh, please, God!"

"Meg, I can't think of anything to say. Can't you say something,
Meg? Aren't there any prayers about the dying in the Prayer Book?--
I forget. Say something, Meg!"

Meg's lips moved, but her tongue uttered no word.

"Meg, I'm so frightened! I can't think of any.thing but `For what
we are about to receive,' and that's grace, isn't it? And there's
nothing in Our Father that would do either. Meg, I wish we'd gone
to Sunday-school and learnt things. Look at the dark, Meg! Oh, Meg,
hold my hands!"

"Heaven won't--be--dark," Meg's lips said. Even when speech came,
it was only a halting, stereotyped phrase that fell from them.

"If it's all gold and diamonds, I don't want to go!" The child was
crying now. "Oh, Meg, I want to be alive! How'd you like to die,
Meg, when you're only thirteen? Think how lonely I'll be without
you all. Oh, Meg! Oh, Pip, Pip! Oh, Baby! Nell!"

The tears streamed down her cheeks; her chest rose and fell.

"Oh, say something, Meg!--hymns!--anything!"

Half the book of "Hymns Ancient and Modern" danced across Meg's brain.
Which one could she think of that would bring quiet into those
feverish eyes that were fastened on her face with such a frightening,
imploring look?

Then she opened her lips:

"Come unto Me, ye weary,
And I will give you rest,
Oh, bl---

"I'm not weary, I don't WANT to rest," Judy said, in a fretful tone.

Again Meg tried:

"My God, my Father, while I stray
Far from my home on life's rough way,
Oh, teach me from my heart to say
Thy will be done!"

"That's for old people," said the little tired voice. He won't expect
ME to say it."

Then Meg remembered the most beautiful hymn in the world, and said
the first and last verses without a break in her voice:

"Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!

Hold Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes,
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee
In life, in death, 0 Lord, abide with me!

"Oh! and Judy, dear, we are forgetting; there's Mother, Judy, dear--
you won't be lonely! Can't you remember Mother's eyes, little Judy?"

Judy grew quiet, and still more quiet. She shut her eyes so she
could not see the gathering shadows. Meg's arms were round her,
Meg's cheek was on her brow, Nell was holding her hands, Baby her
feet, Bunty's lips were on her hair. Like that they went with her
right to the Great Valley, where there are no lights even for stumbling,
childish feet.

The shadows were cold, and smote upon their hearts; they could
feel the wind from the strange waters on their brows; but only
she who was about to cross heard the low lapping of the waves.

Just as her feet touched the water there was a figure in the doorway.

"Judy!" said a wild voice; and Pip brushed them aside and fell
down beside her.

"Judy, Judy, JUDY!

The light flickered back in her eyes. She kissed him with pale lips
once, twice; she gave him both her hands, and her last smile.

Then the wind blew over them all, and, with a little shudder, she
slipped away.



Chapter XXII And Last


"She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years."

"No motion has she now--no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks and stones and trees."


They went home again, the six of them, and Esther, who, all her
days, "would go the softlier, sadlier" because of the price that
had been paid for the life of her little sweet son. The very air
of Yarrahappini seemed to crush them and hang heavy on their souls.

So when the Captain, who had hurried up to see the last of his poor
little girl, asked if they would like to go home, they all said
"Yes."

There was a green space of ground on a hill-top behind the cottage,
and a clump of wattle trees, dark-green now, but gold-crowned
and gracious in the spring.

This is where they left little Judy. All around it Mr. Hassal had
white tall palings put; the short grave was in the shady corner of
it.

The place looked like a tiny churchyard in a children's country
where there had only been one death.

Or a green fair field, with one little garden bed.

Meg was glad the little mound looked to the east; the suns died
behind it--the orange and yellow and purple suns she could not
bear to watch ever again while she lived.

But away in the east they rose tenderly always, and the light crept
up across the sky to the hill-top in delicate pinks and trembling
blues and brightening greys, but never fiery, yellow streaks, that
made the eyes ache with hot tears.

There was a moon making it white and beautiful when they said
good-bye to it on the last day.

They plucked a blade or two of grass each from the fresh turfs,
and turned away. Nobody cried; the white stillness of the far moon,
the pale, hanging stars, the faint wind stirring the wattles; held
back their tears till they had closed the little gate behind them
and left her alone on the quiet hill-top. Then they went-back
to Misrule, each to pickup the thread of life and go on with the
weaving that, thank God, must be done, or hearts would break
every day.

Meg had grown older; she wouldnever be quite so young again as
she had been before that red sunset sank into her soul.

There was a deeper light in her eyes; such tears as she had wept
clear the sight till life becomes a thing more distinct and
far-reaching.

Nellie and she went to church the first Sunday after their return.
Aldith was a few pews away, light-souled as ever, dressed in gay
attire, flashing smiling, coquettish glances across to the Courtneys'
pew, and the Grahams sitting just behind.

How far away Meg had grown from her! It seemed years since she
had been engrossed with the latest mode in hat trimming, the dip
of "umbrella" skirts, and the best method of making the hands
white. Years since she had tried a trembling 'prentice hand at
flirtations. Years, almost, since she had given the little blue
ribbon at Yarrahappini, that was doing more good than she
dreamed of.

Alan looked at her from his pew--the little figure in its sorrowful
black, the shining hair hanging in a plait no longer frizzed at the
end, the chastened droop of the young lips, the wistful sadness
of the blue eyes. He could hardly realize it was the little
scatterbrain girl who had written that letter, and stolen away
through the darkness to meet his graceless young brother.

He clasped her hand when church was over; his grey eyes, with the
quick moisture in them, made up for the clumsy stumbling words of
sympathy he tried to speak.

"Let us be friends always, Miss Meg," he said, as they parted at
the Misrule gate.

"Yes, let us," said Meg.

And the firm, frank friendship became a beautiful thing in both their
lives, strengthening Meg and making the boy gentler.

Pip became his laughing, high-spirited self again, as even the most
loving boy will, thanks to the merciful making of young hearts; but
he used to get sudden fits of depression at times, and disappear all
at once, in the midst of a game of cricket or football, or from
the table when the noise was at its highest.

Bunty presented to the world just as grimy a face as of old, and
hands even more grubby, for he had taken a mechanical turn of late,
and spent his spare moments in manufacturing printing machines--so
called--and fearful and wonderful engines, out of an old stove and
some pots and rusty frying-pans rescued from the rubbish heap.

But he did not tell quite so many stories in these days; that deep
sunset had stolen even into his young heart, and whenever he felt
inclined to say "I never, 'twasn't me, 'twasn't my fault," a tangle
of dark curls rose before him, just as they had lain that night when
he had not dared to move his eyes away from them.

Baby's legs engrossed her very much at present, for she had just
been promoted from socks to stockings, and all who remember the
occasion in their own lives will realize the importance of it to her.

Nell seemed to grow prettier every day. Pip had his hands full with
trying to keep her from growing conceited; if brotherly rubs and
snubs availed anything, she ought to have been as lowly minded as
if she had had red hair and a nose of heavenward bent.

Esther said she wished she could buy a few extra years, a stern
brow, and dignity in large quantities from some place or other--
there might be some chance, then, of Misrule resuming its baptismal
and unexciting name of The River House.

But, oddly enough, no one echoed the wish.

The Captain never smoked at the end of the side veranda now:
the ill-kept lawn made him see always a little figure in a pink
frock and battered hat mowing the grass in a blaze of sunlight.
Judy's death made his six living children dearer to his heart,
though he showed his affection very little more.

The General grew chubbier and more adorable every day he lived.
It is no exaggeration to say that they all worshipped him now
in his little kingly babyhood, for the dear life had been twice
given, and the second time it was Judy's gift, and priceless
therefore.

My pen has been moving heavily, slowly, for these last two
chapters; it refuses to run lightly, freely again just yet,
so I will lay it aside, or I shall sadden you.

Some day, if you would care to hear it, I should like to tell
you of my young Australians again, slippping a little space
of years.

Until then, farewell and adieu.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.